


Endophagy

by piggy09



Series: Incisor Rooms [6]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-28
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-01-25 10:45:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12529548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: n. cannibalism within a group; devouring from withinA collection of drabbles in the Incisor Rooms verse.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> [warnings: gore, unhealthy relationships]
> 
> This takes place a little bit after History of Wounds.

The waiting is the worst part. While Rachel’s eyes are growing back, she is bound to the bed; she refuses to stumble around the house, refuses to make her helplessness visible. So that means all she can do is sit in this bed, breathe in through her nose – as if that helps – and wait for them to come to her.

Helena, at least, remembers to bring food; she comes with teapots, sits at the foot of Rachel’s bed and pours her tea and tells her secrets Rachel only half-understands. _Coming back to your den and smelling musk and not even minding, because it’s warm. A baby bird thrashing on the ground. Stepping on the wings of a baby bird thrashing on the ground. Putting the baby bird back together._ Then a phrase Rachel understands as _sorry_.

 _You always are_ , Rachel will say, because she always does. Say that. She always does. Helena is familiar, by now; they dance like ornate clockwork figures, in the same circles. Helena, Rachel understands.

But Sarah—

Sarah only comes by accident. Awful. Helena smells like her sometimes, awful, they start to smell like each other after a while, awful, Sarah only comes into Rachel’s room by accident. She always lingers guilty in the door. Rachel tells her to come in, every single time.

She can keep Sarah there, if she tells Sarah stories. She should have realized that earlier – Sarah likes stories, Sarah listens to stories with a tentative and hopeful narcissism. She always looks for herself in them. Rachel can imagine the exact expression on her face, when she listens: the almost-frown, the fan of her dark hair over Rachel’s white bed. Rachel wants her. Rachel wants her. Awful, awful, awful.

Sarah looks for herself and Rachel gives her Rachel, before that was her name. See, here, see the girl, young and sharp and learning about wanting like she was the first to ever want anything. Here she is, on the island. Here she is, beloved, golden child, glass darling.

Today (tonight?) Sarah has laid down on Rachel’s bed, brazen, her head close to Rachel’s leg. Obligingly Rachel is running her fingers through Sarah’s hair. Rachel wants—

Awful.

“And when the dancing was over,” she murmurs, “they were both gone.”

Sarah doesn’t say anything. Asleep? No, she doesn’t smell like sleep. She’s thinking. “She never found them again?” she says.

“No,” Rachel says. “She looked, but they were gone.” Dead, actually, but she is curious to see if she can get Sarah to forget about death. If Sarah is here long enough. Sarah is sixteen different experiments wrapped in a coil of organs that Rachel wants—

Awful.

She hears the noise of Sarah shifting on the bed; Sarah can’t get up, because Rachel has a coil of her hair wrapped around her fingertips. Like a leash. Like the prelude to a leash. If Rachel asked the house for a leash, it would probably give her one. She hasn’t tried it yet, she shouldn’t be thinking about this, awful.

“I feel like I owe you something,” Sarah says. “For the stories. Debts, yeah? I just—” she sighs. “Don’t remember anything.”

“Really?” Rachel says. “Nothing?” She tightens the choke of Sarah’s hair around her finger until her blood pulses and aches in her fingertip. She could bite her fingertip, drink her own blood; it wouldn’t fix anything. Sarah’s blood would fix all sorts of things, but that is a thought she is trying to avoid.

“Pieces,” Sarah says vaguely. A small repeated rustle. She’s twitching, somehow, Rachel wants (awful). She wants (awful) to take Sarah apart like a clockwork doll and catch all the cricket-twitches from inside of her and eat them and then put Sarah back together and have Sarah thank Rachel for making her still.

Awful awful awful awful awful.

“Remember when my daughter learned to walk,” Sarah says. “I think. I was—” and Helena steps through the door. She smells like wet fur and the blood that’s soaking it; she smells like earth and piss and picea. She doesn’t even say anything. She just jumps onto the bed and curls up between Rachel and Sarah, like she has any right to be there.

“Hello,” she says.

“Helena,” Rachel says, and she hears the way her own voice sounds exhausted. It never used to before. Before, it never used to sound like anything at all.

“Hey,” Sarah says, and Rachel hears rustling. Awful awful _awful_ that she can’t see it, that they could be doing anything on her bed and she wouldn’t know. In the hot dark space behind her eyelids Helena pulls out a knife and presses it to Sarah’s throat and Sarah lets her – even though Rachel knows this is unrealistic. She would smell it, for one thing. The blood. She would smell it.

She tugs on Sarah’s hair, listens to Sarah’s almost unnoticeable gasp. There. Hers. Rachel’s. If she ignores the sound of Helena growling-giggling to herself, it’s like Helena isn’t even there. Like Sarah is finally completely hers – oh. Wait. Awful.

“What are you doing,” Helena says, and Rachel hears in the curve of her consonants: _and why wasn’t I there, what about me, love me, choose me, want me_. Awful. Terrible. Miserable animal. It’s not that Rachel wants to rip her apart again; it’s not that it would be satisfying, the gore, the look of surprised terror on Helena’s face, the way she slumps to the ground every time – in stages, like falling down a flight of stairs. It’s not that Rachel wants that.

“Stories,” Rachel says. “Nothing that would interest you.”

“I like stories.”

“You got any?” Sarah says, having already forgotten what she was about to give Rachel. Just like Helena, that forgetting. It’s fine. Sarah is too much like Helena now anyways. What’s a little more?

“I have plenty,” Rachel says, coaxing her voice to cruel softness. “If you don’t recall, Helena.”

Helena doesn’t say anything. Rachel imagines the look on her face, and the secondhand pleasure of watching is enough to get her to go back to running her fingers through Sarah’s hair. The coil of Sarah’s hair falls off her finger, and back into the dark well of unseeing. As soon as it leaves her fingertip it’s gone.

“You never told me,” Sarah says. “About before I got here.” She shifts. “Surprised the two of you didn’t bloody kill each other,” she mutters.

“No,” Helena says, voice strangely soft. “No.” More rustling, and Helena’s hot meat-breath paints Rachel’s skin. She has settled next to Rachel’s other hand, and is intently focused on winding a curl of her own hair around Rachel’s fingertip.

“Once upon a time,” Rachel says, “there was a girl, and there was a wolf. I’m sure you know this story already. It’s the oldest story there is.”

“Rachel is the wolf,” Helena says in a whisper that makes no effort to be quiet.

“She’s lying.”

“Christ,” Sarah mutters. “You can both be the bloody wolf if it means you won’t start fighting on this bloody bed.”

“Once in times there were two wolves,” Helena says. “And one of them thought it was a girl. And one of them thought one of them was a girl. But they were both wrong. And then they ate each other but it was okay. The end.”

Silence in the dark. Rachel imagines the way her finger is starting to purple, from the noose of Helena’s hair wrapped tight around it.

“Wow,” Sarah says. “That was shit.”

Helena makes an upset sound – rustling – the bump of her head into Rachel’s knee. “Don’t,” Rachel says, and pushes her head off. As she does the loop of hair around her finger tightens, and pulls uncomfortably on Helena’s scalp, and Helena says _the roll of distant thunder, the sound of something enormous coming towards you through the wood_ , and Sarah says: “will you both – bloody – _stop_.”

Rachel stops. She doesn’t know what Helena does until she hears the thump of Helena hitting the floor. More rustling from Sarah – Rachel reaches out a hand – Sarah’s hair is gone, so she’s sat up. “Can’t stand it,” Sarah says, voice shaking. “You’re _blind_ but that won’t bloody stop you, will it? I keep thinking—” Rustling, and the smell of her leaves. Leaves Rachel. Sarah leaves Rachel. Where is she? Where is she standing? Where is she looking? Is she looking at Rachel? Is she looking at Rachel? Is she looking at Rachel?

“Her fault,” Helena says from the floor.

“It is _not_ ,” Rachel says – realizes that last word was a guttural snarl – wrestles control of her voice again. “My fault.”

“Can’t stand it,” Sarah says, voice smeared with tears and anger. She is so beautiful. The feeling in her. Helena’s feelings roll through like thunderstorms, wild and temporary and completely lacking in intention. Rachel – well. But here is Sarah, who feels things like a hot silver spoon clamped tight between teeth. Between Rachel’s teeth. Awful, the idea of her between Rachel’s teeth.

“Sarah,” Rachel says, voice smoothed back down to gentleness, and she swears she can hear the tilt of the air that means Sarah has turned her head back in Rachel’s direction.

“Sarah,” Helena says, her own voice ugly and blunt and worthless. Worthless, terrible animal – ruining everything – Rachel could have Sarah, by now, it would be easy, if Helena wouldn’t—

“No,” Sarah says, and stumbles backwards, and storms off into the house.

 

 

 

 

She leaves Rachel and Helena alone in Rachel’s room.

 

 

 

 

Rachel keeps a roll of bandages under the bed. It can be difficult to find them, in the times when she is blind and lacking in limbs, but she always manages. She is sitting on the floor and binding – clumsily – the gaping-open wound in her belly when the door opens and Sarah is there.

By accident.

“Oh, shit,” Sarah says, and Rachel takes the words and breaks them into pieces, puts some of the pieces in a box marked _despairing_ and some in a box marked _tender_ and some in _worried_ and some in _loving_ and some in _guilty_.

“Sarah,” she says, but doesn’t understand what her own voice says at all.

“I,” Sarah says, and crosses the room. The house must have made a bath for her; she smells like roses and honey. When she kneels down next to Rachel on the ground, Rachel can hear the steady beat of her heart.

Sarah’s hands move in, steady, and wrap the bandages. Oh, awful. Oh, awful.

“I’m surprised you aren’t with her,” Rachel offers to Sarah’s hungry silence.

“You know she doesn’t talk about you,” Sarah says, voice flat and shoved out between her teeth. “’cept when she apologizes for you. You know she does that?”

Rachel doesn’t answer, which isn’t lying. She reaches down her hand to touch the tight white bind of the bandages, holding the meat of her back inside. Sarah’s knuckles. Awful. “Will you help me stand,” she says.

“What’s it worth,” Sarah mutters, but she stands up. Silence. “I’m holding out my hand,” she says. “I just – just realized you can’t see it, can you.”

Rachel doesn’t take her hand. “What _is_ it worth?” she says.

“I don’t know,” Sarah says. “I never know. I don’t know _shit_ , can you just – _tell_ me.”

“Ask.”

“Do you care about her?” Sarah says. “At all?”

Rachel reaches out a hand – for a moment, only darkness – Sarah’s hand. Sarah pulls Rachel up to standing and Rachel sits back down on the edge of her bed. “Yes,” she says. For a moment, the world is:

  1. the feeling of blood soaking through the bandage on her stomach
  2. underneath that, the consistent terrible pain of skin torn open and organs healing
  3. the itching of her eye sockets
  4. the fabric underneath her hands
  5. Sarah



and then Sarah sits next to her on the bed, and the world shrinks some more. It’s a pleasant thought: that outside of Rachel’s bed, nothing exists. The bed its own phenomenally sad, small island. She could be anyone here. She could want things. She could admit that—

“Funny way of showing it,” Sarah says.

“I didn’t tear her stomach open.”

“You’re both…” Sarah says, and then stops. Sighs. More rustling. Rachel gives up: she reaches out a hand, finds Sarah’s leg. Jumping. The hop of kneecap. Under Rachel’s palm it goes still and Rachel could (awful) and it would be so (awful) and Sarah would – anyways, awful.

“Stop twitching,” she says.

“Glad you’re alright,” Sarah says. Boxes: _relieved, guilty, loving, scared_.

“We always are.”

Silence. “You’re bleeding,” Sarah says, as if she’s surprised. Rachel moves her hand through the dark until she finds Sarah’s hand, and then presses Sarah’s hand to her belly. Her blood soaks through desperate and yearning and hungry, rocking like a dark honest ocean against Sarah’s lifeline. Sarah’s breath hitches and she doesn’t move.

“Can you forgive yourself,” Rachel says, “for all the things you want?”

Sarah’s breath staggers again, an animal in a forest that Rachel could hunt if she was willing to. If she was willing to, she could hunt anything down. She doesn’t move. She feels Sarah’s heartbeat rattle through her body, and she waits for Sarah to tell her the answer.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [warning: gore]
> 
> HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Sarah in the middle of the night: nightmares. She doesn’t remember the middle of her dreams, only the edges – a small curl of fingers held in hers, someone yelling something that could have been but wasn’t the word _chrysanthemum_. Now she’s awake. Her stomach hurts. She is wandering through the tangled-up hallways of the house; it feels like digestion, and she wishes that it didn’t. The house groans and grumbles to itself as she stumbles over the edges of rugs and floorboards that are slightly off-kilter. Where are Rachel and Helena? Anywhere, they could be anywhere.

She opens a door and has to close it again, because the light of the kitchen is blinding. Sarah blinks afterimage fireworks from her eyelids and then opens the door again: light, vivid, gleaming off the steel countertops and the basin of the sink and the rack of knives hung up proud and pristine. She can’t tell where the light is coming from.

“Hello?” she says, and steps in. Nothing. The door swings itself shut behind her. “ _Shit_ ,” she hisses – doesn’t bother checking the knob. She wishes it was dark, actually. The dark would feel safer than this constant sourceless light. The counters scrubbed ‘til they shine. The absence of meat.

Rachel brought Sarah here sleepwalking and tried to get Sarah to cut herself. Helena brought Sarah here and dropped an animal body on the ground. Sarah is here, alone, and her stomach is growling. Just a little bit. She remembers potato chips. She didn’t realize she had forgotten about them until they slip down into the pit of her brain and are gone again. The idea of potato chips:

 

Probably doesn’t matter, anyways. She stays close to the wall, pushes open the small pantry door in the back of the room. The room is dark and wet and shining. Something moves – Sarah slams the door shut. Helena? Maybe. Maybe it was just Helena, licking fruit juice off the walls, oh fuck was it ever not Helena.

Sarah looks down, watches her fingers picking anxiously at a loose thread on her sweater. She laughs, once – it’s a nasty sound, grating and wet. Her fingers don’t stop. Sort of strange, really, seeing her own panic but not feeling it so much. Not really feeling it.

She opens the door again. On the ground, the enormous twisted-up deer screams in the back of its throat. It has a huge bite mark ripped out of its belly; its legs dig endlessly on the ground, an upside-down dream of running. It watches her with one white hot eye.

“Hey,” Sarah says, and closes the door. The two of them alone in the dark. Sarah is adjusting—

—wait—

—Sarah’s eyes are adjusting, and they haven’t quite made it yet. The dark is still dark. She puts her feet careful on the blood-slicked ground. “Hey,” she says again. “Do you speak?”

The deer growls, whines. Sounds sort of like Helena. When she runs out of words. Sounds like that. Like they’re the same.

Sarah sits down on the ground. “I think I’m,” she says, and stops – not because she doesn’t have anything to say, but because she has too much. I think I’m dying – forgetting – hungry – too tired to – scared – not scared enough – dying, I think I’m dying here.

She puts her hand on its skull. It shivers. Its fur is thin and soaked with sweat. “She left you here,” Sarah says. “Sad.” She pets its head. Desperately, it tries to tilt its head enough to sink its sharp teeth into Sarah’s hand. Sarah doesn’t let it. Her eyes, clicking slowly into place, give her some wet meat spilling out of the animal’s belly. Sarah swallows down the saliva in her mouth. She doesn’t move; her hand creaks back and forth.

“How long,” she says, “is she gonna keep you alive.”

The deer keens, claws. Its hooves have twitching edges that may or may not be the potential for fingers. They grate against the floor.

“How long ‘til she lets you die,” Sarah says.

_Aaaa_ , says the deer, low and sad. _Aaaah_. Like Sarah’s – like – like something very young. Young and in pain. Sarah’s hand on the sharp curve of its skull. Sarah’s palm pressed to its throat, the strange waltz-time beating of its animal heart.

She closes her eyes. In the dark chrysanthemum, only that’s not the word, it’s almost the word, it’s part of the word, someone keeps saying the smell of chrysanthemums.

“I miss you too,” she says, and she twists her hands sharp and she breaks the deer’s neck.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous said: If you’re still taking Drabble prompts then: incisor rooms + “saudade”, please?
> 
> powerlesbianparisgeller said: Incisor Rooms, Sarah trading another fact about her life to Helena/Rachel in exchange for something?
> 
> [warnings: unhealthy/abusive relationships]

Finding Sarah these days is like hunting, only it isn’t like hunting. Sarah doesn’t stay still anymore. She moves from room to room to room, and Helena has to find her and drag her back before she gets lost down in the dark belly of the house. Sarah’s eyes are empty; they look like tree blood after it dries, brown and gold and echoing. Sarah moves like a machine, which is something Rachel told Helena about once. A machine isn’t real, and it doesn’t know how to stop.

So now Helena is sitting on top of a table that used to have chess pieces on it. The pieces crack between her teeth like bones or nut-shells as she gnaws on them. Sarah is pacing back and forth across the room. She is mouthing something to herself and the thing she is mouthing is this: _brown hair brown eyes brown hair brown eyes brown hair brown eyes brown hair—_

“Who,” Helena says, and Sarah stops. A seed pod. The wind whistling through branches. An open mouth before it howls. Empty.

“What?” Sarah says.

“Who,” Helena says. “Brown eyes brown hair. Who is this. You? If you want to know the color of your eyes you can ask me, I see them.”

Sarah shakes her head and starts pacing again. Her hands shove themselves into her hair and into the pockets of her pants and into each other, so she’s holding her hands, and then they’re moving again. “Do the woods end,” she says.

“Everything ends except the things that go on forever.”

“Are the woods a thing that goes on forever, Helena.”

Helena shrugs a shoulder. “I don’t know,” she says. She picks up a chess piece and rolls it between her hands. It’s the tall one. Helena could know its name; Rachel taught Helena how to play chess, all the pieces and the way the board moves. Helena beat her once and then Rachel almost killed her. She remembers lying on the ground and looking at this piece on the board – it wasn’t white then, it was mostly red. When she presses her tongue to it it doesn’t taste like anything anymore.

When she looks up, Sarah has stopped. Helena takes her tongue off the chess piece. “They end,” she says, because she wants to give Sarah every good thing. Even when she shouldn’t want that. “They stop.”

“Take me to the edge of the woods,” Sarah says.

“No.”

“Take me to the edge of the woods,” Sarah says, “and I’ll tell you about my daughter. However much it’s worth. You want to know her favorite color, Helena? You want to know her name?”

Yes.

Helena puts the tall piece that is called the king back on the board, and nudges pieces around it so the king is protected. Weak. Important, but weak. She hops off the table. “Will you eat first,” she says, but she’s already moving. She knows that Sarah will say

“No.”

so there isn’t any point in waiting. Helena leads them out of the room and into another room that is a hallway that leads to stairs that takes them down into the room that is the entrance to the house. Sarah is on her footsteps. Sarah is so close, Helena loves her.

Helena stops before they get to the door. “Tell me,” she says, and turns around, and watches Sarah. She waits for – there. The thing behind Sarah’s eyes is back, burning and real.

“She paints,” Sarah says, sounding like it hurts. Helena checks: no bleeding. Hm. “Painted. I don’t know. She always made art, was always makin’ stories. Mermaids and shite. Smartest kid I’ve ever met, keeps tellin’ me how I’m like a lion and my friends were – fish, and birds and shit. She—” and the machine inside of her breaks. “That’s it. I’ll give you more when we – yeah. That’s it.”

“Okay,” Helena says, and opens the door. Sarah is closeclose to Helena again when they go out, like she thinks the door will close on her again. Not when Helena is here. When Helena is here, and Sarah still has things to give her, every single door in the world could open for them. Love love love love love.

And they’re back in the woods. Daytime. From stories Helena knows that the sky can be blue and hot and round, but here it is the same as always: very dark and mostly not there. The trees reach for it, desperate. HelenaandSarah crunch through the leaves. In the distance, something sings:

A thorn stuck in a paw in a place you can’t reach it.

Sarah shivers. “Lonely,” Helena offers.

“What?”

“That.” Helena gestures off to the sound. “They hurt and they are alone and the being alone is hurting, and they need help, but helping is hard. So they just sing and hope somebody answers.”

Sarah is silent. “Didn’t—” she says. “Didn’t realize this shit meant something to you.”

Oh.

“Yes,” Helena says. “Family. I told you. Did you forget?”

“No,” Sarah says. She scuffs her feet through the leaves, somehow doesn’t see the bones she turns over with her toes. Her eyes must be bad in the dark.

“I didn’t forget,” she says, after too long has passed.

“Mm,” Helena says, and in the bushes something says:

Being hungry enough to close your mouth around a tree—

And Helena catches an animal that’s flying through the air, and she swallows the animal. Animal bones. Animal meat. Animal body, inside Helena’s body. She licks her lips. In the daydark Sarah’s face is horrified and sad.

“Shh,” Helena says. “They were going to try to eat you, even though you are big. It would have hurt and also taken a long time. Better this way.” She smacks her hand into her belly. “Full! Now if something bigger tries to eat you I can eat them too. And you will be safe in the woods until we go back.”

She said that on purpose. _Until we go back_. She said it on purpose. Sarah doesn’t say anything, which probably means she is trying to not go back again. Or that she’s thinking. Helena can’t taste the difference between those two silences, so she fills both of them and hopes she’s doing the right thing.

“I want more.”

“You just got – no, Helena, no more. Not yet.”

“I saved your life.”

“Piss off, you were hungry, you would’ve done it anyways.”

“Maybe,” Helena says, voice soft – oh, no, oh no, Rachel’s voice. Too late though, it won’t stop. “Maybe the next time something tries to eat you I won’t be fast enough.” Oh she hates that. Oh she doesn’t like that. Oh that is something Rachel would say, a half-truth that hurts, Helena doesn’t like it, once Helena learned about lying she loved it so much. It can make the world so soft.

(But.)

(But: she wants to eat every piece of Sarah’s daughter, every memory Sarah knows. She’s been dreaming about it since Sarah first said that word, _daughter_. Sometimes she wakes up and she’s drooling with it.)

Sarah’s breathing: ragged, jagged. “You can’t – threaten me every time,” she says, voice shaking. “That’s only gonna work once, got it?”

It would work every time.

“Yes,” Helena says. “I am understanding.”

Sarah’s breath goes shuddering out through her teeth, and in the distance there is so much yelling. Like:

Trying to crawl out of a tree trunk but being too big for it.

A tiny baby that thinks it’s grown, except it’s easy to eat. Hairless. Featherless. Pink soft skin.

Something too bright to understand, flashing when you’re trying to sleep.

But Helena can put all of these things into the back of her mind, because Sarah is saying: “She makes origami. You know origami?”

“No.”

“It’s – folding paper. She folded paper into butterflies. All the time. We made a mobile and it’s hanging in her room.” She stops. “What if it isn’t still there.”

Helena still doesn’t understand how you can fold paper into something it isn’t, but that’s fine; she’ll ask Rachel later, and then she’ll learn how to do it, and then Sarah will love her best. “Then it isn’t there,” she says. “Oops.”

Sarah swallows and looks at the ground. “How long ‘til the edge,” she says.

“Longways,” Helena says. “Long long long ways.” She stops as the slap of it hits her, the sudden idea. “If you get tired,” she says. “I can carry you.”

“No thanks,” Sarah says, and keeps pushing forward. Helena catches up. They’re fighting again in the distance, and Sarah looks so scared. Helena slowly closes the distance between them so her shoulder is pressed against Sarah’s shoulder. Warm, love.

“Sometimes I can’t believe you’re related,” Sarah says. “Sorry. Shitty thing to say.”

“No sorries,” Helena says. “Sometimes I forget. Also. So I come back. So I can remember. If I didn’t come back then there would just be two Rachels, someday. And that is too many Rachels.”

“One Rachel is too many Rachels.”

Helena laughs, a shocked growl of a sound. Background noise:

Finding a freshmeat corpse when no one else is around, and all the most tender meat is still in the belly, and you’re starving.

Trying to drink from a lake and realizing that something under the water is bigger and hungrier than you, and wants to eat you. And it will eat you, if you get close, but you’re so thirsty—

But Sarah is smiling, so Helena doesn’t listen to the rest. “Shit,” Sarah sighs. “This place is the bloody worst, but it’s better than that—”

And in the next break in the trees, Rachel is sitting on a log. Helena can smell blood and spit on Rachel’s hands, so Rachel just killed something but doesn’t want Sarah to know. She shouldn’t notice that first. That’s an animal thing. More importantly: Rachel is _here_ , in Helena’s _place_ , glowing from happiness and excitement and some mean Rachel-thing. Rachel followed them and then moved past them and waited.

“Hello, Sarah,” Rachel says.

Sarah stops. Helena also stops. “You hate the woods,” she says, in another square boring collection of syllables that isn’t English. “Go away.”

Rachel doesn’t pay any attention to her. “You weren’t going to say goodbye?” she says, only to Sarah. Her voice is twisted up itself with sadness, which Helena hates, because it’s probably real. But also it’s lying. Rachel is terrible. Sarah’s shoulder is still close to Helena’s shoulder, but that doesn’t really feel like it means anything anymore.

“I,” Sarah says. “You’re. You shouldn’t be surprised.”

Rachel’s face moves very fast through a lot of feelings. She stands up from the log. Her dress is black, the neck dropping all the way down to her ribcage and a big long break slit in the side so her whole leg is bare. Terrible and stupid, to do in the woods. Helena hates that Rachel can look after herself so she can do stupid things.

“Are we going,” Rachel says, “or not.”

Sarah looks at Helena. Helena looks at Rachel, who knows exactly where the forest ends. Rachel looks back and her mouth twists up, mean and red. Helena grabs Sarah’s wrist and pulls her forward again.

Rachel falls into step. “What did you give her for this?” she says to Sarah.

“No,” Helena says. “Not for you. Mine. She gave it to me. You can’t have it.” She is glad, suddenly, that she was greedy earlier; now she has enough memories to chew on for a good long time. She could ask Sarah to whisper now but Rachel’s ears are sharp. Helena hates her hates her hates her.

“She’s right,” Sarah says. “Didn’t make a deal with you.” She doesn’t tug her wrist out of Helena’s hand (joy!) and now they are moving very fast through the woods.

“Do you want her to go,” Helena says to Rachel, around Sarah in the middle between them. Sarah stares at Helena’s mouth and frowns. Not-English sounds.

“Of course I don’t want her to go,” Rachel says, in the same language. “Sometimes I forget how stupid you are. Why would I want her to go?”

“I’m not stupid.”

“I had to come,” Rachel says, mostly to herself. “I can’t trust you to bring her back.”

“Would you stop,” Sarah says. “Would you just – stop.” Now she yanks her wrist out of Helena’s hand, crushes the heels of both hands into her eye sockets, doesn’t stop walking. “I just wanted – _shit_. Of course you both do this, you can’t ever leave me _alone_.”

“Sarah—”

Sarah grabs Helena’s wrist in her own hand, pulls her forwards and forwards and then spins around (joy!) (joy!) to put herself between Helena and Rachel. “No,” she says. “Stay back here, you got it? I need – I need a minute, then we can talk, yeah?”

Helena looks around Sarah to see Rachel’s face doing the same thing it would do if Sarah said to Helena: _I just need a minute, and then we can talk alone_. Rachel’s mouth gets flat. She drops back a step, another step, looking upset to be doing it. Sarah pulls Helena forward.

“How much longer,” she says.

“Too long,” Helena says, twisting her hand so she is holding Sarah’s wrist too. So fragile! Like twigs. Sarah’s pulse a bird in the nest of her bones. Sarah’s heartbeat. “Sorry,” she says. “I want it to be fast now also. Like you.”

“It’s not that—” Sarah starts. “You’re—” and she stops again.

“You know if you didn’t want to eat me you’d be – sweet,” she says. “Like a puppy.”

Helena takes those words and eats them fast before they’re gone. She smiles. The smile makes her whole face into a different shape, and Sarah smiles back at her, and everything is good. It’s all good. Helena is sweet, like the tender flesh inside of bones.

“Dunno if that’s a compliment,” Sarah mutters. “Also, hey, it’d be great if you said you didn’t want to eat me.”

Helena swings their joined arms back and forth. “What would you want instead,” she says. “Do you want to be a butterfly? Like the origamis?”

“I think I already am,” Sarah says, and she tugs at her arm until Helena lets her go. “I’m gonna,” she says, twitching her head in the direction of Rachel’s dark shape. “I’ll catch up, yeah?”

Helena feels her mouth frowning. Sarah’s mouth twists down, but she steps backwards – turns on her heels – is Rachel’s, for now. Rachel holds out her hand when Sarah gets close enough, curls it into the place of Sarah’s back. Helena lets herself have one growl – just one – and then curves away from the edge of the wood to get food.

 

She gets food.

 

When she catches up again Rachel is glowing with another mean thing, and Sarah looks sick, and when Helena gets close enough Sarah holds out her hand and lets Helena hold it. Helena feels fingers curling into the edge of her furs: Rachel, reaching around Sarah, tugging on the edge of a fur.

“Ich bin nicht dumm,” Helena says again.

“Ich kenne.”

They keep walking. Imagine if they could live like this for always, the three of them tied together without any of it hurting.

“Rachel,” Helena says, “can you tell a story.”

“I can tell a story,” Sarah says, before Rachel can do anything except take a breath in. Both of them go stillstillstill and Sarah gnaws on her lip – enough to draw blood? – no, not enough to draw blood – and then starts talking.

“Uh, once,” she says. “There was this girl. And she was all alone, ‘cause she had family, but they – she – they weren’t together anymore, they were gone. It was just her.”

Sarah tells a story. It’s not a very good story because Sarah doesn’t know how to tell stories, but it is a very good story because it feels real. Helena is all alone, because she had family but she left them or they left her and now they aren’t together anymore. She looks at Rachel behind Sarah’s back, and Rachel’s face is flat and sad, because she had family but she left them or they left her and now they aren’t together anymore.

Sarah doesn’t run out of breath, because that’s how stories work. Everything in the woods is quiet enough for her to be heard. They don’t trip. They don’t get hungrier than they can bear. Sarah gives up something and it lasts and lasts until they reach the sea.

Sarah stops when the forest stops. Helena wants to think that means something, but it probably doesn’t – Sarah’s mouth and eyes are wide wide, and it doesn’t look like she stopped on purpose. Outside of the woods everything is too bright, too gold. The ocean laps at the shore; it is blue like a story about the sky. Rachel shoves her way past both of them, steps out of her shoes without looking back or slowing down, and walks right into the ocean. Up to her knees. Helena watches Rachel watch the horizon, looking for a shape that isn’t there anymore.

Then she turns back to Sarah. “So!” she says. “We are here. Edge of forest. Have you been in ocean before? Salty moving water. Not fun. Bad.”

Sarah sits down on the ground, part of her in the peat and mulch and part of her in the sand. She just sits down. She looks out to the horizon too, and then she slumps further down. From the ocean, Rachel trills back in her native tongue. Sarah _wanted me __ ____ you_ , she says. ________ I wanted. I ________. You ____ _____ Sarah _____ ________.

“I don’t get it,” Helena calls back, sitting on the ground and then lying down.

“She said that I could stop you,” Rachel says, turning back to the horizon, speaking in another tongue that doesn’t belong to either of them – another tongue that isn’t even Sarah’s tongue. Nobody’s tongue. “If you tried to stop her from leaving, once we reached the edge of the woods. She told me her daughter’s name in exchange. She said that I could stop you however I chose to stop you.”

“Did you say,” Helena says, “that she could leave. When she reached the edge.”

“No,” Rachel says. “I didn’t say that.”

“Bad promise.”

“That’s not my fault.”

Next to Helena, Sarah starts untying her boots. She takes off her socks. She buries her toes in the sand, starts rolling up her pants. Helena wants to pick her up by any of her fragile bones and pull her back into the dark safety of the woods. Instead she watches Rachel, who is looking over her shoulder back at the both of them _Give me an excuse_ , say her eyes. Helena sighs out through her nose, looks back at Sarah. _You’re sweet_ , Sarah had said, and then she had gone to Rachel and said _if you want to kill her you can do it, you can tear her apart_.

For a moment Helena feels regret. It tears frantic through every single one of her bones, and then she blows it out of her mouth in a stream of breath and it leaves her. She flops down on her back and watches Sarah roll up the legs of her pants.

“Helena,” Sarah says, and stops. Helena rolls her head around on her neck so she can watch Sarah look at the shoreline – the end of things, where there is no way out. The escape that isn’t an escape. The ocean: a thing that goes on forever.

“Sarah,” Helena says.

“Her name is Kira,” Sarah says. Then she leaves Helena and walks into the sea.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [warning: blood, slight violence]

The door to the parlor opens again and she’s standing in it. The person. She’s standing in the door, eyes wide and furious and smeared with eyeshadow. “ _No_ ,” she says, and the door slams shut again.

“ _Chomu my ne tyahnemo yiyi nazad?_ ” Helena says, picking up a watermelon from the breakfast table and sinking her teeth into the rind. She rips out a perfect even bite, leaving a wet hole like a mouth in the melon. Watermelon juice drips onto the table.

“English,” Rachel says. “She speaks English. We speak English.” She takes another sip from her teacup. She can smell the person in every single room of this house. She misses the island. She always misses the island. This house is a terrible labyrinth to hunt in, and hunting one person down wouldn’t give her the satisfaction she needs. Long game. Slow game. She taught Helena chess, but it wasn’t satisfying. This will be better.

The door to the parlor opens again and the person is standing in it. She’s wearing a leather jacket, like a more refined version of Helena’s skins. “ _No_ ,” she says, and the door slams shut again.

“I want to eat her,” Helena says. She bites into the watermelon again and again, aiming for a jugular that isn’t there. The rind is almost gone. Just meat left.

“You can’t,” Rachel says. She drinks from her teacup again. She eyes the collection of pastries and meats and delicacies the house has vomited up onto the table; she could eat them, could join Helena in ripping everything apart with her teeth, but she’s saving it. Eating. She’s waiting for when it will be special.

The door to the parlor opens again and the person is standing in it. She is wearing scuffed black boots, and laddered tights, and black shorts. “ _No_ ,” she says, and the door slams shut again.

“Is this like the chess game,” Helena says.

“It is,” Rachel says.

“I won the chess game.”

“It took you ninety-three tries,” Rachel says. She drinks. “This time you only have one.”

The door to the parlor opens again and the person is standing in it. Her eyes are brown and gold. “ _No_ ,” she says, and the door slams shut again.

Helena swallows the last bit of rind. She holds the soft meat of the watermelon between her hands and then abruptly bores of it, hurls it across the table. It hits the window-wall and splatters, stains the glass.

“Helena?” Rachel says.

Helena blinks at her.

“It’s like that.”

The door to the parlor opens again and the person is standing in it. Her hair is long and brown and tangled. There are blond streaks in it. “ _What the hell is wrong with this house_ ,” she says.

“It won’t let you leave,” Rachel says. “You may as well sit down.”

For a second the person stops and stares at both of them. Her hands clench into fists. Her chin goes up. Rachel’s gaze snaps straight to the pulse beating in her neck; she can feel Helena’s gaze echoing it, slobbering along the line of the jugular.

“I’m not worth shit,” says the person. Voice wavering. Rachel drinks again to keep from licking at the words trembling out of that mouth and taste fear in them. “If you’re trying to ransom me. No one’d pay.”

“Pay what,” Helena says.

The person stares at her. “Money,” she says, a slow obvious word.

“We’re not interested in money,” Rachel says.

“What’s money,” Helena says.

“Who the bloody hell are you people?”

“Wrong,” Rachel says.

“People,” Helena says, and snickers, and picks up a whole roasted songbird from the table. She shoves it in her mouth, crunches. “You should eat,” she says with her mouth full. (Animal.) “I can hear the noise your stomach makes.”

“If you don’t want money what do the hell do you psychos want,” says the person, eyes skipping away from Helena and towards Rachel. (Good.)

Rachel swallows. She puts the teacup down. “Tell me your name,” she says, “and I’ll tell you what we want.” She watches the clenching and unclenching of fingers, the desperate shift from foot to foot. A thing to wonder: does this person know – can she feel, somewhere, in the back of her brain – what it is that Helena and Rachel are? If Rachel made a sudden movement would she sprint for the door and if she ran would Rachel – and would Helena – and would Rachel be faster—

Helena shoves three more birds into her mouth. The crunching sound is loud and sharp. Rachel watches a feeling fly across the person’s face, labels it _disgust_. She’s building a taxonomy. Disgust, she thinks, lands under the phylum of fear.

“Sarah,” says Sarah. Rachel lets her mouth loll open, just slightly, to taste the truth of it. It’s a name warily given, but given freely. It tastes like wariness. It tastes like freedom. If Rachel has her way it won’t taste like either of those things forever.

“Sarah,” she says back. It tastes good.

“Hrrr,” Helena says, and swallows bones. Grins teeth.

“Answer my bloody question,” Sarah spits.

“I did,” Rachel says. “I want you. Sarah.”

Sarah’s face twitches through _disgust_ again, and she slams the door.

“That went well,” Rachel says.

“ _Sarah_ ,” Helena says. “Sarah Sarah. I like it. Tastes like—” and she growls out _rolling over an animal that’s covered in spines so you can see its beautiful soft underbelly_.

“English,” Rachel says, to cover the fact that she understands it completely.

“Tastes like Sarah,” Helena says. She lolls her head back against the dark wood and red upholstery of her chair. “Sarah Sarah Sarah. Can we eat her now.”

“No.”

The door to the parlor opens again and Sarah is standing in it. Her face is disgust, probably, and also anger. She picks up the chair at the head of the table and hurls it across the room. It bangs against a wall. “ _Let me out_ ,” she says.

“Sit at the table,” Rachel says.

“Shove it up your arse,” Sarah says, and goes to slam the door again.

“Sarah,” Rachel says, and Sarah stops. Glares over her shoulder.

“This is Helena,” Rachel says, gesturing at Helena. (Helena holds her hand up in the air, because she doesn’t understand the concept of waving.) “If you leave again I’ll let her come after you. She wants to.”

“Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah,” Helena says. She tilts her head to the side. “Hello.”

Sarah flips a pocketknife out of her leather jacket and holds it up. Light licks along the edge of the blade. “Piss off,” she says, and leaves the room again.

“Why does she have a knife if she isn’t eating,” Helena says.

“She wants to hurt you with it. She doesn’t have sharp enough teeth.”

“Oh,” Helena says. She shoves her chair back from the table and stands up, slams her hands between two plates. “Now I can hunt her.”

“Don’t break her,” Rachel says. Helena frowns as she goes towards the door, furs shushing against each other.

“Prettiest please,” she says.

“No,” Rachel says.

Helena shows her teeth and leaves.

The room is silent. Two of the walls here are glass, but only two of them; Rachel misses the island, misses the blue sky punching at every room. She stands up to take the teapot and refill her cup. The white china splashes dark red. She puts the teapot back and sits down, spreads the black edge of her skirt so it drapes properly. Sips tea. Listens to the banging and thrashing echoing through the hallway, listens to it reaching the door—

The door to the parlor opens again and Sarah falls through the doorway. Helena’s hand is in her hair, pulling her to a seat and dropping her in it. Helena has a huge red cut across her face. Rachel drinks from her teacup, watches Sarah: pale, shaking. “Are you hungry?” she says.

Sarah’s stomach growls. “No,” Sarah says.

“You should eat,” Helena says. “Sarah.”

“You ate my knife,” Sarah says, voice shaking. She looks at Rachel. “She _ate_ my _knife_.”

Helena hacks and coughs. She spits the knife back up; it clatters onto the table. Sarah grabs the knife off the table and shoves it back into her pocket. Helena looks at Rachel with wide eyes. Rachel lowers her eyelids. Helena looks back at Sarah and sticks out her tongue.

“Sarah,” Rachel says.

Sarah stares at Rachel.

“Do you understand where you went wrong,” Rachel says slowly, “when you asked us who we were.”

Helena slaps her hand on the table a few times. “Sarah,” she says. “Sarah you said _people_.” And she laughs, loudly, a collection of loose sounds.

Sarah’s face goes even paler. “You,” she says, and stops, and studies the table. Her eyes dart frantically back and forth.

“No,” she says, and then: “no bloody way. No. No. It’s – a joke, or somethin’. You’re psychopaths with magic tricks.”

“Then leave the house,” Rachel says. “You can’t, can you.”

“You’ve drugged me,” Sarah says.

“What is drug,” Helena says.

“We haven’t drugged you,” Rachel says.

“It’s a trick house.”

“The house has tricks,” Helena says, “but no drugs.”

“What do you want,” Sarah says. “What do you want. What the _hell_ do you want.”

“Sarah,” Helena says. The word drifts out of her mouth like sweet smoke and she leans across the table, snags the apple out of a boar’s mouth and bites half of it off. The ending of the red peel is sharp and shaped like teeth. Seeds hang into open space. Helena offers the apple to Sarah and Sarah slaps it away.

“You,” Sarah says, looking at Rachel.

“Rachel,” says Rachel.

“Rachel,” says Sarah, which unfortunately doesn’t feel like anything. “Rachel. Hey. Hey. You wanna tell me what you want?”

Rachel raises her eyebrows, waits. If Sarah is stupid this will be unbearable; she’ll just kill Helena and eat Sarah herself, not waste her time.

“You can have my knife,” Sarah says, and pulls the knife out of her pocket. Clever girl, but Rachel won’t let her have it: she doesn’t even twitch. She’s curious now what Sarah will do.

Helena giggles to herself and makes slurping noises. Sarah looks at her, looks at Rachel, looks at Helena again.

“You don’t want it,” she says slowly, “’cause she had it first.”

Rachel smiles.

Sarah shoves her hands into the pocket of her leather jacket, starts pulling things out and dropping them onto the table: a packet of matches, a piece of white cotton on a string, a crumpled-up photograph she shoves back in her pocket – “ _ah_ ,” she says, and it smells like her blood. Everything. It all smells like her blood.

“ _Shit_ ,” Sarah hisses, and pulls her hand out. She’s bleeding. Helena is utterly still; Rachel can feel her own mouth hanging slightly open. Sarah pulls a round thing out of her pocket: a button with a monkey on it, the metal safety pin hanging open, a bead of Sarah’s blood drying on the end. “Oh,” Sarah says. “Oh shit.”

“That,” Rachel says immediately. Helena growls to herself and sinks down lower in her chair.

“What?” Sarah says.

“Give me that,” Rachel says. “I’ll show you the way out of the house.”

Sarah goes still, so they’re all still. “You’ll let me out.”

“I’ll lead you to the door myself.”

As she thought it would, the deal makes Sarah forget what she’d originally wanted from Rachel. She stands up, rounds the table, drops the pin in Rachel’s open waiting hand. “You’re sick,” she says. “You’re so bloody sick, you want to eat it, god, hope you choke on it.”

Rachel folds her hand around the plastic and metal and considers. “For that,” she says, “Iwant the knife too.”

“No.”

“If you give me the knife,” Helena says, “I will show you door. Nice door. Made of dead trees.”

Sarah shakes her head. “You said,” she says, turning back to Rachel, “you said, give me that, I’ll let you out.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You _did_ ,” Sarah says.

“She didn’t,” Helena says, which is an unexpected blessing.

“Jesus Christ,” Sarah says. “ _Shit_. Bloody – shit—” and she slaps the knife on the table. “Let me out of this bloody nightmare, I swear, let me _out_.”

Rachel takes the knife. It’s a sharp little thing. She holds Sarah’s blood and Sarah’s knife in her hand and stands up. “Alright,” she says. “The door.”

“Great,” Sarah says: relieved. Her stomach growls again.

“You could eat first,” Helena says.

Sarah lets out a thin high sound that could be a laugh. “Yeah,” she says, “no thanks.”

Rachel opens the door to the parlor. “How do you do that,” Sarah says. “How do you change the bloody wallpaper every time.”

“It’s a different hallway,” Rachel says. She goes to close the door but Helena slithers through it before she can. Rachel closes the door and goes down the hallway. Sarah is on her right and Helena is behind them. At any time, Rachel could kill either of them. When Sarah turns around to study the door behind them Rachel swallows the pin and the knife.

“It’s not a different hallway,” Sarah says.

“Is,” Helena says. At the end of the hallway is the staircase; Rachel takes it down, and Helena slides down the railing to reach the bottom first. At the bottom she grins at the two of them: _ta-dah_.

“That’s it,” Sarah says, staring at the door. It’s enormous and grand, and the only visible feature in the room.

“That’s it,” Rachel says, and Sarah runs for it. Helena sits down on the stairs and Rachel pauses on the step above her with her hand on the rail. She watches Sarah run. She could chase her, but she won’t.

Sarah tries the handle – and tries it again – and rattles it back and forth – and stops. “Unlock it,” she says.

“No,” Rachel says.

“We made a deal,” Sarah says.

“I said I would show you the way out,” Rachel says. “That’s it. Are you ready to come back to the table now?”

Sarah turns around and stares at both of them. Rachel watches, memorizes: the ragged jagged edges of Sarah, her twitches, the way she is an animal built out of feelings Rachel only partially understands. Rachel has to memorize this now, before she begins the process of taking Sarah entirely apart.

“You have to let me go,” Sarah says.

Rachel just smiles.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [warnings: reference to gore, cannibalism, abuse]

The smell of Sarah is everywhere in the whole house, always, but Helena can follow the smell to Sarah if she concentrates. Sarah smells around the edges like nightmares, which are a thing Helena did not know was real until she came to this house and was told about the thing called nightmares. Sarah smells like those: burning. 

Helena had to learn about burning too. Rachel showed her, and it hurt.

Sarah smells like a nightmare about burning, and also she smells like hungry, and Helena puts her feet in front of her feet and follows the smoke of the hungry to Sarah. She passes doors and doors and doors. Rooms and hallways and rooms.

She finds a locked door. When she presses her tongue to it, she tastes on the other side of it: burning, nightmares, metal. Wind and metal. An empty metal wind.

Helena tries the handle of the door that is Rachel’s. It’s locked. It won’t open for her, no matter how much she pulls at it.

Sarah changes smells when she’s around Rachel, and Helena knows that change so well it hurts – the way that Rachel can rip open your belly with her teeth and then put her hands inside and find your heart and twist it so it beats differently. Rachel taught Helena about burning, and she also taught Helena to be scared. Rachel changes things. Things that Rachel changes: Helena, Sarah.

Helena slams her shoulder against the door. Helena slams her shoulder against the door. Helena bites the handle and claws at the door and it doesn’t open and the last time Helena had made Sarah laugh Rachel had looked at Helena, and her eyes were empty, and it’s cheating to take Sarah somewhere Helena can’t follow. It’s cheating. Rachel cheats.

Helena tries clawing through the wall, next, but the house won’t let her do that so she has to stop. She claws up the floorboards and underneath are just more floorboards. When Sarah laughs, it sounds like bones breaking. Rachel doesn’t understand the way that the sound of Sarah laughing is like bones breaking, she understands it wrong, Helena is in a room full of clocks ticking and that isn’t where she wanted to be at all. She breaks a clock. She breaks another clock. Rachel taught Helena about time and Helena wishes that she hadn’t. Helena wishes she could rip herself open and undo all of Rachel’s stitches, but if she did that Sarah wouldn’t recognize her anymore. And the only sound of breaking bones would be bones, breaking. There wouldn’t be any other way to hear that sound.

She’s in another room. The room has only the instruments that are called violins, so Helena breaks those and moves on. Rachel taught Helena about violins, and Rachel taught Helena how to have feet and walk on them, but it turns out that is not an easy lesson to remember if you’re too busy thinking about Rachel putting her clever fingers onto Sarah’s arm and twisting Sarah up into all the wrong shapes. Helena forgets how to have feet. Teeth, she remembers.

The house makes a maze out of piles of paper and Helena crashes through the maze and finds a door and goes through the door. The entire house smells like Sarah, always. Once Helena asked Sarah what her nightmares were and Sarah wouldn’t tell her. Probably she would tell Rachel. 

The house won’t let her outside. Does she want to go outside? Yes, she wants to go outside. Also she wants Sarah, she wants Sarah, she wants to break Sarah’s bones or maybe hear her laugh or maybe rip open Rachel with her teeth and find Rachel’s heart and feed it to Sarah while it’s still beating and pushing at Sarah’s teeth and punching its way down Sarah’s throat. The room becomes another room. The hallway becomes another hallway. There are no windows, or doors, and the house won’t let Helena out.

And when she turns a corner: Sarah.

Sarah opens her mouth and says words. Helena knows those, probably – but also Rachel taught her words, so she hates them. She says:

Tripping and falling into a pit that’s bigger than you, and you can’t get out of the pit, and you are starving and dying in the pit but you can’t scale the walls.

Sarah’s face makes a shape that is the shape of a feeling. She says more of the words. Rachel’s words. She says words, and all of the words are Rachel’s, and then she stops making words and starts making loud sounds that don’t mean anything and that is when Helena realizes that she is on top of Sarah on the ground. Somehow. She isn’t supposed to hurt Sarah, but she doesn’t remember why; she can taste Sarah’s heartbeat inside of her throat and it would only take one bite and she doesn’t remember why, she doesn’t remember anything, Sarah should stop going behind locked doors, Sarah should stop going where Helena can’t follow her.

She says:

The forest.

She says:

The forest.

She keeps on telling Sarah about the forest, over and over, the trees that go on forever and the harsh whispering sound of the leaves and the way Helena knows family, which is a thing that can eat you alive. Water comes down Sarah’s face but it isn’t from Helena, it’s from Sarah’s eyes. Tears. Tears come when you are sad; you cry them. Sad is a feeling that makes you cry.

Helena says:

“I’m sorry.”

and then she’s herself again, and she remembers feet. They are the things on the end of your legs. There are twenty-fix bones in the foot and ankle. They are the calcaneus, the cuboid, the metatarsal–

“I’m sorry,” she says again, and presses her forehead up against Sarah’s throat. Sarah smells like nightmare, burning, fear. When Rachel taught Helena about burning she said:  _You can use fire. You may go your entire life without ever being hurt by it. But Helena? It can always burn you. Even if it’s behind a grate. Even if it’s an ember the size of your fingertip. There is always the potential for agony._

The words that Sarah says are: “Get off of me.” Her voice is shaking. Also her body is shaking. Helena would like it if Sarah hugged Helena and said nice things, but Sarah has too much shake inside of her to do that. Helena rolls off of her, onto her back on the floor.

“I’m sorry,” she says, for the third time. “You went away. You aren’t supposed to go away, Sarah.”

The only sound is Sarah breathing. When Helena sits up to look at Sarah, Sarah is staring at the door. Staring through the door. Her eyes are going all the way through the door and outside to a place where Helena can’t follow her, again.

If Helena took Sarah’s eyes out, Sarah couldn’t look places where Helena can’t go. Helena would eat Sarah’s eyes and then they’d be inside of her, and all the things Sarah had ever seen would be inside of her, and that would be love. She lies back down on the floor and watches Sarah watch the away. After a long time of this, Sarah sits up. Then she stands up. Then she walks towards a door, and opens it.

 _Turn around_ , Helena thinks. If Sarah’s eyes see her, that would be good; Helena would be inside of Sarah’s eyes too, reflected in them. Real.

But Sarah doesn’t turn around. She opens a door, and walks through the door, and closes the door, and leaves Helena alone.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


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